


Home Cooking

by Neroli66



Category: Firefly
Genre: Gen, Rayne-ish
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-03-26
Updated: 2006-03-26
Packaged: 2019-09-15 14:42:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,424
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16935180
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Neroli66/pseuds/Neroli66
Summary: The sizzling of bacon always reminded Jayne of home, the way Ma used to let him snatch a piece or two before the others had woken up for breakfast. He didn’t even mind having to cook it up himself so much, he liked the smell of it and the sound of it cooking almost as much as he liked eating it.





	Home Cooking

**Author's Note:**

> [Plot bunny](http://community.livejournal.com/rayne_shippers/314514.html) courtesy of [](https://evitaporter.livejournal.com/profile)[](https://evitaporter.livejournal.com/)**evitaporter** , hope this works for you. Not sure it’s quite what you had in mind, but there _is_ food and cooking and a type of hot oil, and pre-Rayne and lots and lots of interest, some of it is even in the food. *g*  
> Un-betad, for now, so any mistakes are mine.

The sizzling of bacon always reminded Jayne of home, the way Ma used to let him snatch a piece or two before the others had woken up for breakfast. He didn’t even mind having to cook it up himself so much, he liked the smell of it and the sound of it cooking almost as much as he liked eating it.

Not that he’d had it much since he left. In fact, up till signing on with Serenity, most jobs he’d had there wasn’t enough money to buy more than protein bars and whiskey.

Here, he’d had a few good jobs that had paid out enough to get some real food, first time he‘d gotten those damn apples that the moon brain had eyed in the market. Second time he‘d really splurged and got some chocolate, the real stuff, not that _go se_ most border worlds tried to pass off as chocolate.

He’d been Kaylee’s best friend for about a week till it ran out.

So this time, when they got that sweet payout from the heist on Highgate, he’d decided to get himself some bacon and eggs. Last time he’d had so much as a whiff of a chance at getting some had been back on Canton.

He carefully pulled the first batch out of the pan with the chop sticks he was using for tongs and laid them neatly on the plate next to him before turning to get more off the counter behind him. Two batches should do it, he reckoned, since none of the others were up at this hour.

With a slight grin at his own cleverness for getting up so early to eat, he turned back around to the stove.

The sight of the little Looney leaning over his pan, gazing at it with that annoying, Jayne’s-doing-something-I-don’t-understand look on her face just about made him jump out of his skin.

Gorramit, he should have known she’d spoil his meal.

“Hey,” he reached over and pushed her head out of the pan, “gonna get hair in my oil, don’t ya know to pull your fool hair back when someone’s cooking?”

She looked up and fixed him with a glare. Well, two could play that game, he thought as he glared back.

“Hair is not foolish,” she corrected him prissily while she rubbed at the spot on her forehead he‘d used to push her. “It is wayward.”

“Foolish, wayward, whatever,” he muttered. “If it gets in my oil one more time I’m chopping it all off.”

“Not your oil, it belongs to _that_ ,” she pointed to the bacon beside him, daring him to contradict her.

“Yeah well,” he starting laying the fresh strips of bacon in the pan after assuring himself there was no wayward River hair in it. “I paid for that so it belongs to me, therefore, the oil is mine.”

“A logical conclusion,” River agreed with an approving nod of her head.

Jayne stared at her dumbfounded, but the girl ignored him as she pulled one of the chairs over from the table.

He tried, a little, to hold back the chuckle as she sat down and folded her arms on the counter. She could barely get her chin up high enough to rest it on her folded arms from that position. Made her look a bit like them wobbly headed dolls, only without the body.

He _did_ manage to get the laughter under control when she gave him what he’d come to think of as her Reaver look. The one that said “if you don’t shut up I’m gonna gut you like a Reaver“.

With a sigh he turned his attention back to his cooking, carefully turning it over so none of the oil would splatter. He then turned to the fridge to pull out his eggs.

“Why does it make that sound?” her soft voice made him turn back around, good thing too, damn fool girl had shifted into a kneeling position on the chair so she could reach the pan again.

“Gorramit, girl,” he smacked her hand away like his Ma used to do. “That’s hot, don’t you have any sense at all?”

She looked up at him with those big, brown eyes of hers, lower lip trembling slightly, and he felt the anger wash out of him.

“Gonna burn yourself if you ain’t careful,” he added gruffly. “You’re the genius, aught to know better. Hell, you should be the one telling _me_ why it makes that sound.”

“Comprehend the physics of severed flesh creating noise as it is seared in it‘s own melted fat tissue over an extreme heat source,” she said as she sat back on her heels. She scowled at the pan as if the noise it was making was a personal affront to her. “Just don’t understand why, out of all the available sounds, it chose to make _that_ one.”

Jayne found himself chuckling again as the girl continued to stare down at the offending pan of bacon, even if the first bit of what she'd just said made him a might queasy. She’d plopped her chin back onto her folded arms, still a little close to the pan for his comfort, but at least she was keeping her hands to herself for now.

It puzzled him though, the girl had never shown much interest in what was being cooked before. She’d barely shown an interest in eating most of it, especially her brothers. He grimaced slightly at the memory of some of Simon’s more colorful attempts to make an edible meal.

“Processed protein meant to simulate potato cakes was not interesting,” her eyes shifted up to watch him as he started to pull the bacon out. “And Simon can’t cook.”

“Ain’t that the truth,” he grinned down at her. She should smile more often, she had a pretty smile.

Just then there was a loud pop from the pan below him.

Jayne jumped, but not as much as River. This time he did manage to hold in the laugh as she bolted upright, rubbing her nose and glaring daggers at the piece of bacon hanging from his chop sticks.

“You alright?” he asked, starting to get concerned that the splatter might have done some real damage.

“It spit at me!” her face scrunched up indignantly as she looked at him.

He wasn’t sure what she expected _him_ to do about it, the damn pig was already dead, not like he could kill it again and avenge her cute little nose.

It took him a minute to realize what the widening of her eyes and that little smile curving her lips meant, and by then it was too late. She’d already skipped around to his side of the counter and stuck her face right up to his.

“You could kiss it and make it better,” she suggested innocently.

Least, it would have been innocently if it weren’t for the fact that she’d just read his gorram mind and was now standing mere inches from him with her face turned up and waiting for him to kiss it.

“Or I could wake Simon and have him apply some ointment to the wound and tell him you think I have a pretty smile,” she beamed up at him, clasped her hands behind her back and did that little swishy thing girls did when they knew they had a man by the balls.

The protest that he could put the ointment on it himself without having to wake her brother died on his lips as her eyes widened again.

Gorramit!

He leaned forward and placed a quick peck on the tip of her nose before she could think of a way to use that last thought against him too.

Big brown eyes gazed up at him for what seemed like forever, far too knowing for their own good, or _his_ own good. He breathed a sigh of relief when she finally turned away, apparently satisfied for now.

Or maybe not, he thought as he caught a glimpse of the way her hips swayed right before she moved around the corner.

His eyes tracked her warily as she kneeled back on her chair. Once she was settled she leaned over and snatched the bacon out of his chop sticks in one deft move.

“This one is mine,” she said before popping the whole thing in her mouth and grinning mischievously up at him.

There was just something about a girl who liked her bacon, Jayne mused.

“So, how do we cook the chicken embryos?”  



End file.
